


parting is such sweet sorrow

by mistyheartrbs



Category: Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, that's about it?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 06:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19193860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyheartrbs/pseuds/mistyheartrbs
Summary: Chika and Riko, at the end (and beginning) of something extraordinary.





	parting is such sweet sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> this has been bouncing around my drafts for like a month now and today i finally finished it, hope you like Suffering

What was there to say, Riko wondered, that hadn't been said already? Oh, Aqours had gone further than anyone had expected, they'd gone their separate ways amicably, but still-

Still.

What could she say to Chika that even scratched the surface? How could she put into words the way she felt like running, crying her lungs out, declaring her feelings for the whole entire world beyond the ocean the way Chika seemed to do so easily?

(And of course she did not know how much effort it took her friend to do that, how much false bravado - she was not a natural leader, after all, but she was also smart and she knew how to keep that close to herself)

(Riko was the only one who'd even come close to knowing)

She didn't get Muse, didn't understand their appeal as much, but their music wasn't bad, and some of it was certainly inspiring if nothing else. 

But she couldn't very well confess with someone else's song, couldn't put out that heart-pumping blood-rushing feeling as words - dammit, she was a _composer,_ it shouldn't have been so difficult _and yet and yet and yet-_

They'd reached for each other and touched the very tips of their fingers together and for a shining, glimmering moment anything was possible. 

How she longed to feel like that again. 

"Riko-chan?" Chika twirled her little braid around her finger - though unconfirmed, Riko had always theorized that she kept it that way so she could fiddle with it without seeming strange. "You okay?"

"You're going to be incredible," Riko murmured, and she could hear windchimes in the distance. 

"Huh?"

"Don't make me say it again, Chika-chan." The ocean breeze blew through the sidewalk, light and gentle, ruffling her skirt. "I'm going to Tokyo. You're staying here. Right? No reason to say anything now."

"Riko, what are you talking about?"

"I . . ." Riko gulped, put a hand on her chest to feel her heart beat, beat, beat, and she was sure that to outsiders it looked like it was glowing like in that television show Mari had shown her, once. "Chika-chan, do you remember that day on the beach?"

"We've had a lot of days on the beach. We live right on it."

"No, I mean . . . it was early in the morning, our second year - well, my first year at Uranohoshi, but you get what I mean - and you told me to play in the piano competition, and I held your hands and I said . . ."

". . . I love you," Chika murmured, still not looking at her. "Oh."

"It was so early," Riko laughed, soft, at the memory. Even now it felt hazy. "For so long I thought parts of it must have been a dream." 

"I could've told you it wasn't."

"I didn't want to ask." Riko couldn't bear to look at her. Chika probably wasn't looking, either - she had a thing about eye contact, Riko had it too, but usually-

Usually she could get swept up in her. 

"I, ah, I always wondered." Chika stared at the clear blue sky above. "But then the school closed and so much happened and-"

"Right, right." 

"So that's all you wanted to say, right? Just, remembering that, right?"

"No." 

"No?"

"I mean . . . it's too late for anything else, I know, but I do love you, Chika-chan. That hasn't changed at all." Riko's voice started to break, she started to move her fingers like they were playing some tiny invisible piano, just to keep herself grounded, just to stay here with Chika so she could pretend they'd see each other again, someday, maybe. "I should've said so, I should've told you so much earlier, I'm so _stupid-"_

"Hey." Chika took her hand, then, calmed her quivering fingers. Riko felt a jolt straight through her heart. "It's okay." She still wasn't looking, shaking just a little, and then Riko realized what that meant, saw her feelings in the world's most brilliant, wonderful mirror, and she _broke._

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, tears dropping, dropping, falling onto their interlocked hands. "Chika-chan, I'm so sorry."

"Me too." Chika gulped, then redirected. "Off to Tokyo soon, right? You ought to finish packing. Wouldn't want to be late for the plane!"

"We live next door to each other." Riko didn't know why she was refusing this out, refusing to cut the conversation short. It would have been so _easy_ to do so, and yet Chika never made things easy, and yet she made things feel as natural as breathing. 

"Yeah, right, I guess we do." Chika wiped her face with her arm, smiling that wobbly, bright smile of hers. "Still. Tokyo." The meaning behind her words wasn't lost on Riko. "Meanwhile my folks are passing down the inn, so I guess I'll be here for a while. Better get a head start, right?" 

"Right." Riko dropped Chika's hand, then, and in a move she never would have been able to explain, she moved her hand to cup her face. Chika's eyes glimmered with unshed tears. As if she were the damsel in a movie, Riko pressed her forehead to Chika's, willing herself not to cry again, again, again-

and then Chika pulled away and smiled. 

"Long-distance isn't impossible, is it?" she said, and Riko felt something new yank at her heart. 

"No," she murmured, and the world seemed to float around her. "It's not." 

"So let's try it! Can't be any worse than this, right?" 

"Right." Riko shook her head, as if to make sure this wouldn't all suddenly disappear. Chika was still there, a watery blur in her visage but still so clearly _Chika_ and still so, so beautiful. "Right, it can't." 

"So you really should pack and we've wasted like two years tiptoeing like this but we've got phones and computers and planes and I bet Mari'd lend us her helicopter if we asked nice enough, so . . ."

"Can I kiss you?" Riko asked, even though rationally she knew it'd be a terrible kiss, both of them were crying and shaky, but it was a now-or-never kind of thing, she figured. Chika nodded. 

"Yeah."

And it didn't taste like much, really, mostly just salty tears and the sensation of Chika smiling against her mouth, but it was also fireworks and floating and flying to the moon and the stars and back. Riko could feel the sand caught between her curling toes. 

"Wow," Chika managed out, once they parted. "We could've been doing that for two years?" 

"I suppose," and then they both cried again, but-

But they had phones and computers and strange wealthy friends, so something felt okay right then, because weirdness and imperfection might as well have been their themes, and they were in love anyway, so it didn't matter much. 

Things felt okay.

**Author's Note:**

> you think i would end this sadly? i can't do that


End file.
